In May 2010 a team of 15 Chinese researchers from Tsinghua University in Beijing and the Hefei National Laboratory for Physical Sciences, a government-directed research center, published a research paper announcing a successful demonstration of “quantum teleportation” (liangzi yinxing chuan) over 16 kilometers of free space. These researchers claimed to have the first successful experiment in the world. The technology on display has the potential to revolutionize secure communications for military and intelligence organizations and may become the watershed of a research race in communication and information technology.

Although much of the science behind this technology is still young, quantum technologies have wide-ranging applications for the fields of cryptography, remote sensing and secure satellite communications. In the near future, the results from this experiment will be used to send encrypted messages that cannot be cracked or intercepted, and securely connect networks, even in remote areas, with no wired infrastructure, even incorporating satellites and submarines into the link…

Scientists have developed a computer chip that could pave the way for a new generation of powerful ‘quantum’ computers.

The photonic chip, built by scientists from Bristol’s Centre for Quantum Photonics, uses light rather than electricity to pass information.

The breakthrough could lead to ‘quantum’ computers capable of performing complex calculations and simulations that are impossible for today’s computers.

The researchers believe that their device represents a new route to a quantum computer – a powerful type of computer that uses quantum bits (qubits) rather than the conventional bits used in today’s computers.

Senior Associate Alvin Steinberg suggests that we portray the nanotech race as in part a security race involving quantum computing, and that Foresight use this as a way to get Congress interested in funding nanotechnology R&D. What do you think?

Congress being forward looking and pro-American?! I don’t think so. The US would spend more on worthless Welfare than anything else. Now nano-Government cheese, they’d go for that.

Let’s not forget that a corollary to this idea is that the students and universities will rally to the call. They are much more interested in Snooky than quantum entanglement. Culturally, the US is bored with being innovators — American Idol narcissism is the all the rage now.

So sad since the West has done this already more than a decade ago albeit at “lab distances” and I am suspicious of the distance advertised by the Chinese.

But if it’s true. Bye bye the West. I can see organized crime and Wall Street funding this stuff more than Congress.

the US has no high level, over-reaching research program for quantum information science. the funding sources are disparate and lacking. IARPA don’t fund gov’t research, DARPA has the QuEST and InPho programs, but there is not one HUGE pot of money to do both basic and applied research with. the europeans, canadians and chinese are kicking our asses. a colleague of mine recently returned from a trip to a foreign university. they have brand new equipment and money being thrown at them. whereas we, in in the country’s top gov’t lab, struggle to find money and qualified US born scientists. if ever there was a need for a manhattan project type funding drive, it’s with quantum information science.

The fastest way I can think of to squash innovation in a field such as quantum physics would be to place research under the aegis of national security, I believe that would be a very bad idea. How, for example, can we expect quantum information theory to flourish if all research in the field is classified? That doesn’t make much sense.

How does the author reach the conclusion that the exchange of information via quantum entanglement is secure BTW? I didn’t have an opportunity to read the Chinese paper.